Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas Read Free Page A

left it and Clyde can have the little room in back.”
    I decided that a little bragging was in order. “I've beenworking at the record shop on Fillmore and the people down there gave me a raise. I'll pay rent to you and help with the food.”
    “How much are they paying you?”
    When I told her, she quickly worked out a percentage. “O.K. You pay me that amount and buy a portion of food every week.”
    I handed her some cash. She counted it carefully. “All right, this is a month's rent. I'll remember.”
    She handed the money back to me. “Take this downtown and buy yourself some clothes.”
    I hesitated.
    “This is a gift, not a loan. You should know I don't do business slipshod.”
    To Vivian Baxter business was business, and I was her daughter; one thing did not influence the other.
    “You know that I'm no baby-sitter, but Poppa Ford is still with me looking after the house. He can keep an eye on Clyde. Of course you ought to give him a little something every week. Not as much as you pay the baby-sitters, but something. Remember, you may not always get what you pay for, but you will definitely pay for what you get.”
    “Yes, Mother.” I was home.
    For months life was a pleasure ring and we walked safely inside its perimeter. My son was in school, reading very well, and encouraged by me, drifting into a love affair with books. He was healthy. The old fears that I would leave him were dissolving. I read Thorne Smith to him and recited Paul Laurence Dunbar's poems in a thick Black Southern accent.
    On an evening walk along Fillmore, Clyde and I heardloud shouting and saw a group of people crowded around a man on the corner across the street. We stopped where we were to listen.
    “Lord, we your children. We come to you just like newborn babies. Silver and gold have we none. But O Lord!”
    Clyde grabbed my hand and started to pull me in the opposite direction.
    “Come on, Mom. Come on.”
    I bent down to him. “Why?”
    “That man is crazy.” Distaste wrinkled his little face.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because he's shouting in the street like that.”
    I stooped to my son giving no attention to the passers-by. “That's one of the ways people praise God. Some praise in church, some in the streets and some in their hearts.”
    “But Mom, is there really a God? And what does He do all the time?”
    The question deserved a better answer than I could think of in the middle of the street. I said, “We'll talk about that later, but now let's go over and listen. Think of the sermon as a poem and the singing as great music.”
    He came along and I worked my way through the crowd so he could have a clear view. The antics of the preacher and the crowd's responses embarrassed him. I was stunned. I had grown up in a Christian Methodist Episcopal Church where my uncle was superintendent of Sunday School, and my grandmother was Mother of the Church. Until I was thirteen and left Arkansas for California, each Sunday I spent a minimum of six hours in church. Monday evenings Momma took me to Usher Board Meeting; Tuesdays the Mothers of the Church met; Wednesdaywas for prayer meeting; Thurs day, the Deacons congregated; Fridays and Saturdays were spent in preparation for Sunday. And my son asked me if there was a God. To whom had I been praying all my life?
    That night I taught him “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.”

CHAPTER 2
    My life was an assemblage of strivings and my energies were directed toward acquiring more than the basic needs. I was as much a part of the acquisitive, security-conscious fifties as the quiet young white girls who lived their pastel Peter Pan-collared days in clean, middle-class neighborhoods. In the Black communities, girls, whose clothes struck with gay colors and whose laughter crinkled the air, flashed street-wise smirks and longed for one picket fence. We startled with our overt flirtations and dreamed of being “one man's woman.” We found ourselves too often unmarried, bearing